Page 32 - Teaching and learning of interdisciplinary thinking in higher education in engineering
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Chapter 2
2.3.2 Development of a search strategy
In order to develop a search strategy appropriate to the main purpose of this review, various search terms were listed, such as multidisciplinary learning and integrated approach. After careful consideration of the consequences of removing potential search terms, the following search terms were identified as being the most informative: interdisciplinary thinking, interdisciplinary understanding, interdisciplinary teaching, interdisciplinary course, interdisciplinary courses, interdisciplinary curriculum, interdisciplinary curriculums, interdisciplinary curricula, interdisciplinary program, interdisciplinary programs, interdisciplinary programmes, interdisciplinary education, and interdisciplinary learning, each in combination with undergraduate, graduate, higher education, and university. Quotation marks were used to search for phrases. The chosen search strategy focused on title, abstract, and keywords in order to obtain publications with a clear focus on teaching and learning within the context of interdisciplinary higher education. The chosen search terms followed the four components of the Conceptual Review Framework (see Figure 2.1). For the component student, no search terms were identified since the term interdisciplinary student was not used and student only resulted in too many irrelevant publications. In view of this, it was hoped that the search terms identified for the components IDT, learning environment, and learning process would reveal publications concerning the component student.
2.3.3 Identification of relevant publications
Four databases were searched: the Educational Resources Information Centre (ERIC) catalogue, the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI); the latter three provided by the Web of ScienceĀ®. The abstracts of the publications resulting from the aforementioned search strategy were screened for relevancy. If the abstract did not provide
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